The Internet and its growing Web 2.0 counterpart have moved beyond the realm of information exchange and redundancy to become the real-time fora of narrative construction. Fuelling and fanning all forms of popular speculation the net now creates its own post-modern mythologies of world domination, corporate control and government induced fear fetishism.
If the net itself is not a conspirative construct designed to control and influence global intellectual expression then, rumour has it, it plays the central role in implying as much.
Has the Internet now become a self-fulfilling prophecy of its own destructive speculation?
V2_, in collaboration with the Media Design group of the Piet Zwart Institute, invites you to join Florian Cramer, Claudia Borges, Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico in an evening of net-based conspiracy built upon abrasive speculation, conjectural divination and devious web bots.
Alessandro Ludovico, editor in chief of Neural, has been eavesdropped upon electronically for most of his life due to his hacktivist cultural activities. Promoting cultural resistance to the pervasiveness of markets, he is an active supporter of ideas and practices that challenge the flatness of capitalism through self-organized cooperation and cultural production. Since 2005 he has been collaborating with Ubermorgen and Paolo Cirio in conceptually conspiring against the smartest marketing techniques of major online corporations. neural.it/
Florian Cramer, course director of Piet Zwart Institute Media Design, had his education sentimentale as a member of the Neoist Cultural Conspiracy and is rumored to be involved in numerous anonymous collective efforts. His interest in plots, networks and signs brought him to study literature and investigate networks, speculative programming and cultural semiotics. Next to encouraging hacker approaches to information design, he currently researches the subliminal impact of obscenity on the human mind. pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdma/programme/
tatibrazil aka Maria Claudia de Azevedo Borges hails from São Paulo, Brazil where she graduated in Clinical Psychology. Her official life as an artist began in Rotterdam where, after 10 years of busying herself with oil paint, she was seduced by the Internet. As part of her practice exploring women's issues she trains and designs critical bots using female identity, language and narratives. Her methods are highly unorthodox, using the material of conversation and jargon as a means of information gathering. Currently, it is claimed, that she collaborates with the ethereal being known as Joy Evidence. www.d-tati.org/bot/ tati.sohosted.com/retrieveme/index.html
Hans Bernhard is a St. Moritz based artist whose true madness first surfaced when he started up the internet-underground cult etoy in 1994. In 1999 he and three other founding members of etoy bought the mother company etoy.holding while investing dot-com money in a Sofia based software firm (esof ltd). During the web site action Vote-Auction to buy and sell votes during the 2000 U.S. presidential elections Hans and lizvlx (UBERMORGEN.COM) were sued by 12 U.S. states, investigated by U.S. federal attorney Janet Reno, observed by the FBI, the CIA and the Austrian secret police and put under NSA surveillance. Afterwards he initiated NAZI~LINE (with Christoph Schlingensief), a neo-nazi re-integration project. Other projects currently getting him into serious trouble with German/Austrian secret services and corporate lawyers include GWEI (Google Will Eat Itself), the Injunction Generator and Amazon Noir. UBERMORGEN.COM / etoy.holding www.ubermorgen.com
TANGENT_CONSPIRACY will also feature sisterO and The Algorithmic Oracle who will reveal your place in the manifold of time with their Media Divination 2.0. Bring an image or article of personal interest and be ready to disclose your date of birth ...
Andrea Fiore, The Algorithmic Oracle, is currently a second year student of Media Design at the Piet Zwart Institute. He holds a degree in communication sciences from the University of Rome with a thesis on software as cultural artifact and spends much of his time data mining, profiling, conjuring social software, and exploring digital archives and privacy issues. pzwart2.wdka.hro.nl/~afiore
Nancy Mauro-Flude's sisterO project involved an extended period of research in Colombia looking at new & old media at the Society of Ethnomedicine; this resulted in a series of transmission-based performances. Her work as a performing artist refers to the history of political cabaret, mesmerism and the experiential worlds carried in their wake. Currently a Master's candidate in Media Design, Piet Zwart Institute. sistero.sysx.org/ eclectictechcarnival.org
TANGENT_CONSPIRACY will also be streamed live via www.v2.nl. We welcome and encourage external online participation to V2_'s moderated IRC channel: irc.v2.nl/#tangents. During the event we will be introducing V2_'s new chat bot, the incorrigible and witty CyB!
Read more about this event at: www.v2.nl